Commenting on the CFI’s non-response

CFI finally responded to the Ben Radfort brainfart. It’s a really fucking stupid response, that I shall take apart now:

What is the cornerstone of CFI’s mission? Is it atheism or humanism? No, not really. Commitments to atheism or humanism or any other “ism” are conclusions we arrive at, presumably after consideration of the relevant evidence and arguments.[and feminism ain't? Fascinating] The cornerstone of our mission is freedom of expression and critical inquiry.[Excellent. so now, I'm sure, you will thoroughly criticize Ben Radford for the complete and utter lack of critical inquiry in his rambling, right?] We see freedom of expression and critical inquiry as indispensable tools for arriving at an accurate understanding of just about any issue of importance, including, but not limited to, the truth of religious or fringe science claims. This brings me to the recent controversy concerning Ben Radford’s blog post on Free Thinking, as well as the related controversy about the blog Free Thinking itself.

The bloggers on Free Thinking, as has been stated on numerous occasions, and as readers of our blog are expressly advised, represent their own personal opinion.[what does "opinion" have to do with this? What happened to "critical inquiry"?] They do not speak for CFI. (Even this blog post is not technically official policy, as it has not yet been reviewed by the full Management Committee, but it would be appropriate to describe it as expressing my view in my official capacity as president & CEO.)[that's... incoherent, actually] We intentionally adopted this policy not only because it’s practical (you can’t do a timely blog post if it has to pass through management review), but because we wanted our bloggers to feel free to advance novel and speculative ideas, arguments, and theories[sexism-denialism is novel? In which universe is that true? And why does the same not apply to the "novel and speculative" ideas of AGW-denialism, evolution-denialism, etc.?] without worrying about whether they’d get in “trouble” with management.

We also fully expected that some of the blog posts might make claims that some in our audience would dispute. Great! Isn’t that how the advance of knowledge through free expression is supposed to work? Jane makes claim 1A in her blog post; Joan politely points out in her comments that Jane has overlooked factors x, y, and z; and Jane then thanks Joan for pointing this out, revising her claim to 1B.[that's nice, but has fuck-all to do with what happened, since "Jane" got pissy and pouty and doubled down on a truly idiotic claim. Again I ask, what happened to "critical inquiry"?]

This is an idealized version, of course. In real life, it’s more like this: Jane makes claim 1A; Joan calls Jane a fucking idiot; Jane calls Joan a moron and digs in her heels; Tom, over at another blog, yells that both Jane and Joan are stupid; Jane and Joan momentarily join forces to call Tom a sexist pig[I do wonder what this non-sequitur here is supposed to do? Are you saying "sexist" is an insult like "moron" and "idiot", without an actual meaning?]; Frank says Jane has no business blogging and should be fired; Larry comes up with some obscure dictionary reference the relevance of which no one can understand; and someone using the pseudonym Weeenie10 with a cute Batman icon limits himself to typing in the word “fart,” and on it goes, for about 800 comments spread over 3 or 4 blogs.[this whole paragraph is a strawman of what actually happened; if that's how you are trying to make your argument, you're not doing it particularly well]

Isn’t the Internet wonderful?

Actually, it is. Near instantaneous transmission eliminates certain filters, so, yes, there’s a lot of junk that gets posted, including pointless insults, but there are serious commenters, and their comments can clear up some mistakes and steer a discussion in the right direction. Whether the exchange of ideas works efficiently, as in the ideal model, or in fits and starts, as in the real world, it often works.[except in this case, where incoherent, uncritical sexism-denial is being posited as an "opinion" and the idiot who did it is not changing his mind; while those who've pointed out that he fails at basic research, critical thinking, and the ability to take criticism are being castigated for being "mean" and wanting him fired]

Obviously, there are limits to what we’d put up on our blog, not because we want any limits on free expression, but because we are a donor supported organization and we have an obligation to use that donor money prudently[so if the Discovery Institute gave you money, you'd start allowign creationists to post? Or what the fuck is this line supposed to mean? Is this a very long euphemism for "addressing sexism denialism is mission creep"?]. So we’re not going to invite Joel Osteen, Deepak Chopra, Warren Jeffs and so forth to blog[ok, so you are either saying that you were lying about the whole "The cornerstone of our mission is freedom of expression and critical inquiry" thing and the deciding criterion is cash (who pays you for letting sexism-denialism be posted?), or you're saying there's a difference between the reality-denialism of religiosity and reality-denialism of sexism. Either way, this is not making you or the CFI look good]. These individuals can take advantage of the outlets available to them. Our bloggers are all, broadly speaking, working from a nonreligious or skeptical perspective.["broadly speaking" meaning "sometimes not at all"? Because the complete lack of critical thinking skills and "skeptical perspective" in Radford's posts is what people are complaining about]

One or more of our current bloggers could also conceivably write a string of posts clearly contrary to CFI’s mission and/or its official position on important policy issues. A blogger could, for example, argue that the Establishment Clause should not be enforced[erm... you do know that's an actual opinion, right? the "should" kind of gives it away. We're not arguing about opinions here though], that alternative medicine should be exempt from scrutiny, that women should not have the same rights as men, that we should prohibit gays from serving in the military, and so forth[still all opinions, some hateful some ignorant; nothing to do with sexism-denialism and lack of critical inquiry in sexism-denialism, as has been perpetrated by Radford]. Depending on the frequency of such posts, the person might be removed from blogging or other action might be taken. Again, this would not be because we’re opposed to free expression, but because we don’t see the need to fund a continual stream of messages that are contrary to our mission[you're really confused. I though you said humanism and atheism weren't part of your mission? Let me make this clear: if someone posted opinions that go against humanism, you'd eventually ban them from posting, but someone who exhibits complete lack of critical thinking is exempt?]. That’s never happened and I think it’s unlikely to happen because someone who found themselves disagreeing with several of our key public policy positions presumably would seek employment elsewhere.

This brings me to Ben’s recent post (or posts, as he had more than one, and the one that actually appeared on Free Thinking seems the least controversial). Some commenters have recommended that Ben be fired or removed as a blogger. Similar suggestions have been made, by the way, about Melody Hensley, who commented on Ben’s blog posts, either on Free Thinking or elsewhere.

First, by way of background, these recommendations are not unprecedented. Every few months I receive recommendations about firing employees, terminating individuals’ contracts, or ceasing all contact with certain authors or speakers. For example, I’ve previously been told (in public fora) that I should fire John Shook, Michael DeDora, and Melody, that I should remove Chris Mooney as POI host, that I should never invite PZ Myers to a conference again, that I should not allow Paul Kurtz to post on our blog (back when he was still with CFI) and that CFI should forever cut any and all ties with Richard Dawkins and Rebecca Watson (this last suggestion usually being made by different people)[were any of those criticisms made because the people in question were failing at the basics of critical inquiry or skeptical thinking, or just because their opinions pissed someone off? Because there is a difference]. I have declined to follow all such recommendations. I have declined all such recommendations because the reasons offered were either not worthy of consideration or essentially asked me to cut these people off simply because they were perceived to be on the wrong side of an issue.[I smell a strawman coming on; otherwise, this entire paragraph could have been excluded, as people are not calling for action from CFI because they disagree with Radford]

The fact that a person may be on the “wrong” side of a particular issue is not a sufficient basis, absent exceptional circumstances, for CFI to stop working with that person—especially when it’s not always immediately apparent what the “wrong” side is[and there it is, the strawman. it's not disagreement that's the problem; it's that sexism-denialism is not actually a matter of disagreeing on matters of opinion or even policy, but about denying reality; and Radford did so in an especially non-critical, non-skeptical way that exposed his inability to do proper research; I mean really, children's books? Ask Yahoo?]. We’re supposed to be free thinkers, not dogmatists.

Ben’s posts may exhibit some mistakes in reasoning and may have used some research that was unreliable. I think I can make these statements with confidence because Ben has acknowledged these mistakes himself, in part because some commenters pointed out some research he may have overlooked. (See, free expression does work—sort of.)

Based on this, I don’t see any reason to take any action.[I'm eagerly awaiting the day you let creationists, anti-vaxxers, AGW-denialists and 9-11 Truthers post on your site, as long as someone criticizes them and they offer sufficiently non-committal not-pologies]

Some commenters suggested there should have been an official CFI rebuttal. Why? An official rebuttal suggests that Ben was speaking on behalf of CFI and we needed to clarify that he was not, but as indicated, he was speaking for himself. Second, there were already rebuttals aplenty of Ben. PZ Myers, Rebecca Watson, and Julia Lavarnway (a CFI employee) had their own blog posts criticizing Ben and commenters on Ben’s posts did not seem to be at a loss for words.

And what is it CFI was supposed to rebut?[uh... the factually incorrect bullshit he wrote? I have a very hard time imagining you'd be asking the same thing if the post had been written by a creationist, anti-vaxxer, AGW-denialist or 9-11 Truther] Ben’s speculations about the hues of dolls’ faces? Presumably not.[why not? it's factually incorrect, after all] What appeared to bother some commenters was Ben’s alleged sexism.[no; his sexism-denialism. why the fuck can't you tell the difference?]

OK. CFI denounces sexism[nice but really fucking irrelevant to the topic at hand]. We always have and presumably always will. Stereotyping based on gender is wrong and policies and practices that promote such stereotyping should be condemned. Furthermore, attitudes that exhibit sexism are unacceptable, and we should work to eliminate such attitudes, including, to the extent they exist, such attitudes within secular/skeptical organizations
[this also has fuck-all to do with the subject at hand, which is reality-denialism, research-failure, and complete lack of critical thinking].
The problem is I doubt that Ben would disagree with anything in the above paragraph, nor did I see anything in his posts to suggest he would[might that be because you've attacked a strawman that had fuck-all to do with the criticisms aimed at Radford? Yes, yes I think it might]. Therefore, I’m not sure it counts as a “rebuttal.”

At the end of the day, it seems to me we had a controversial post (or posts) in which a blogger ventured some opinions[the denial that certain forms of sexism exist is not an opinion any more than the denial of AGW or of the age of the earth is an "opinion"], invited comments on those opinions, received comments that suggested he had erred in some ways, and then modified some of his opinions. This is not something we should decry. To the contrary, we should support a robust exchange of opinions.[This.is.not.about.opinions.]

Because of this recent controversy, CFIs Management Committee will discuss the future of Free Thinking this coming week. I have made plain my views, but we do have collective leadership at CFI, so it’s not inconceivable that the policies governing Free Thinking would change. I hope not, because I think any radical change would undercut what CFI stands for. There are already an ample number of institutions that provide the comfort of orthodoxy[not denying reality and scientific research is "orthodoxy"? Is it "orthodoxy" to accept AGW? Is it "orthodoxy" to accept the Theory of Evolution? because you can't have it both ways: if accepting the reality of the sexism Ben denied is "orthodoxy", so is the acceptance of every other well-established observation of reality.] for those want that sort of thing. They’re called churches.[fuck you, too]

So all this rambling to simply state: “I think sexism is a matter of opinion not of measurable and observable reality, so while we won’t let believers in the Yeti post, we will still allow sexism-deniers to post. Everyone who disagrees with me on this is a fundie.”

barf.

“post-modernism”, physics-style

The ubiquitous use of “post-modernist” as an insult meant to describe some sort of uber-relativistic, solipsistic mental-masturbation has always bugged me. Post-modernism was a very important development that deconstructed the illusion of humans (or “scientists” or “men”, depending on the topic) as objective observers of reality. It posited humans as interpreters of reality, who constructed models, symbols, etc.to make a counter-intuitive reality comprehensive to brains that never had any “reason” to evolve the ability to do so. And yet, people sneer at post-modernism and constructivism (the idea that reality is constructed by people) as some sort of wooey, New Agey “everyone can have their own reality and their own facts” sort of BS.

Well, imagine my glee when, while reading an article in Skeptic about Stephen Hawking’s 2010 book The Grand Design, I come upon a discussion of Hawking’s “Other Controversial Theory”: Model-Dependent Realism.
The article in Skeptic explained MDR in the terms very similar to the ones the social sciences have been using for years (but with more neurologyscience*), and the more I read about it, the more it seems to be the very same thing. But this time, it comes from a source not so easily dismissed by nerd-snobbery: the world’s most famous physicist**. A relevant quote from the book:

[Model-dependent realism] is based on the idea that our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the world. When such a model is successful at explaining events, we tend to attribute to it, and to the elements and concepts that constitute it, the quality of reality or absolute truth. There is no picture- or theory-independent concept of reality. Instead we will adopt a view that we will call model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations. This provides a framework with which to interpret modern science. According to model-dependent realism, it is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only whether it agrees with observation. If there are two models that both agree with observation … then one cannot say that one is more real than another. One can use whichever model is more convenient in the situation under consideration. It might be that to describe the universe, we have to employ different theories in different situations. Each theory may have its own version of reality, but according to model-dependent realism, that is acceptable so long as the theories agree in their predictions whenever they overlap, that is, whenever they can both be applied.
According to the idea of model-dependent realism …, our brains interpret the input from our sensory organs by making a model of the outside world. We form mental concepts of our home, trees, other people, the electricity that flows from wall sockets, atoms, molecules, and other universes. These mental concepts are the only reality we can know. There is no model-independent test of reality. It follows that a well-constructed model creates a reality of its own.

source

So: I’m going to have to read that book now, just to make sure I’m not entirely deluding myself about this (wouldn’t want to end up like those morons who think relativity and quantum physics “are what Eastern religions have been saying for millenia”), and if it turns out to be that MDR really is a physicy version of constructivism/post-modernism, next time someone sneers at those concepts because they’re primarily used in the social sciences (and, *gasp* the arts and humanities), I might have to link them to a discussion on MDR and/or suggest the book to them.
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*dum… dee… dum…
**Yes, I’m fully aware I’m making an appeal to authority. However, nerd-snobbery is an argumentum ad hominem, and I find that, in non-formal discussions, those two cancel each other out nicely. So, to get those who commit the ad hom against constructivism to get past their mistake, I present them with an authority their tribalist brains might be willing to take seriously. In terms of intellectually honest debate, this might be cheating a bit, but fuck it: if it gets the morons to pay attention to such important concepts, it might be worth it.

Not quite back yet…

****** PZ NOW CONFIRMED THAT THE COMMENTS IN QUESTION WERE INDEED MADE BY THE REAL RICHARD DAWKINS ******

… but the most recent women-in-atheism thread, especially the vile comments by Richard Dawkins claiming that women don’t have the right to complain about rape culture until after they’ve been physically harmed, and that the everpresent thread of rape women live with is exactly like the “threat” that someone might loudly chew gum in front of him, was sort of the last straw. We desperately need feminist atheism. And since I’ve repeatedly mentioned that I’m not a leader, I’ll instead contribute to the creation and visibility of it differently: I made a picture (well, I made two pictures):

Feminist Atheism (also available in GNU)

not necessarily my best work, so anyone who wants to is welcome to make a better one (just keep in mind, the A needs to remind you of atheism, not anarchism, so sticking with the round A’s is probably the way to go :-p)

UPDATE:
and because apparently I’ve got nothing better to do today, here are some intersectional atheism ones, which I like better, from a design-perspective

UPDATE 2:
ok, last ones, promise ;-)

Intersectional Atheism

There is absolutely nothing on the internet about intersectionality within atheism/skepticism. I checked. The entirety of what’s out there is about atheism as part of the Matrix of Oppression in society as a whole, but nothing about the how the Matrix of Oppression works on and within atheism or the skeptical movement.

Which is why I’m writing this post despite the fact that I’m just about the last person who should, since I have a small audience, and one that’s made up to a very large degree of white, straight(-ish), guys. Someone has to make this post, and at least once it’s written, it’ll be out there on google for more relevant people to pick up on it. Plus, maybe some good ideas will come of it even here.

So, for starters, intersectionality means looking at oppression and discrimination not from the POV of identity-politics, but from the POV of the three main dimensions of oppression: the institutional, the symbolic, and the personal. We don’t think much about this in atheism/skepticism, especially as it relates to the skeptical/atheist movements themselves. We just take for granted that certain aspects of being or becoming an atheist and being/becoming a part of the atheist movement, are universal because they apply to most of the atheists we know. “most atheists we know” most often happens to be other white/straight(-ish)/male atheists (and the occasional white/straight(-ish)/female atheist who happens to live a life that closely resembles that of the male equivalent). These non-intersectional, most likely unconscious, assumptions are very likely what explains the abysmal lack of diversity in the atheist/skeptical movement.

If the goal of the atheist/skeptical movements is really to broaden the base and make atheism, and especially skepticism, attractive, acceptable, and attainable by as many people as possible, then solving the lack of diversity is essential, because white, straight, cis, middle class or higher, ex-christian(or cultural christian), anglophone guys make up a minority of the population even in Western Europe and the USA, where they’re most common. Hence the need for intersectional atheism: if we can’t figure out how the perspectives, issues, and problems of people from completely different backgrounds differ from ours, we will never be able to make our ideas acceptable to them, even if they’d otherwise already agree with us. Because people aren’t going to accept a worldview/contribute to a movement that behaves as if they didn’t exist, creates an environment in which they feel unwelcome, unneeded, or even threatened, and expects them to give up more than just their attachment to irrational ideas and/or superstitions.

So, here’s a list of stuff that needs analyzing and possibly changing, and that most importantly could really need the input of atheists/skeptics from these backgrounds:

1)Most prominent atheists are deconverts from the mainstream religion within their cultures, specifically Christianity. This creates issues and perspectives quite different from those who would be deconverting from a minority-religion, and especially from a religion closely tied to a discriminated against ethnic community. The problems WASP-y future ex-christians face are completely and utterly different from the issues facing Native Americans thinking skeptically about their tribal religions, or members of Middle Eastern diasporas thinking about leaving Islam. To them, the perspectives of secular diasporic Jews would probably be far more valuable than the perspectives of millions of cultural Christians living in cultures that are Christian or even secular-but-formerly/predominantly-Christian.

2)Related to the former is the assumption that secularization equals Westernization. Meaning, it seems to me that too many atheists assume that deconversion from a non-Christian religion automatically means also becoming part of the mainstream western culture (and on a larger scale, that secularization of a country means abandoning traditions derived from their cultures in favor of Western culture), which, in case no one noticed, is to a large degree de-religioned Christian/Euro-pagan culture. Secularism won’t ever win in non-Western countries if the choices are traditional religion vs. neo-colonialist secularism. The secularism of non-Western cultures must be a home-grown secularism that manages to separate the harmful and supernatural aspects of their culture without destroying the culture as a whole. And since the West managed that, there’s absolutely no reason to assume this cannot be accomplished with non-Western cultures.

3)Simply talking about how well feminism (and anti-racism or LGBT-activism for that matter) and atheism/skepticism go together won’t do any good if this is not something the atheist/skeptic movement actually acts on. Skeptifem said that she started her blog specifically to fill the niche of analyzing things critically from a skeptical feminist perspective. This perspective is still extremely rare within the skeptic movement, which is idiotic, because the Matrix of Oppression, and especially the symbolic dimension of oppression, lends itself spectacularly to skeptical analysis. So why isn’t there any of that?

4)Going from theory to praxis, atheist/skeptic events are also never intersectional. Part of the problem is that they’re lecture-based. The grass-roots, interactive level happens after the events, in the evenings over beers. This perpetuates already established hierarchies. And while one way to fix this is to invite more speakers from different backgrounds, another is to make grassroots participation an inherent part of the events. Interactive workshops, children’s events, and safe-rooms have been some of the things mentioned as possibilities to attract a more diverse crowd and faciliate more diverse conversation. I’d add that these sort of things need to be also part of the smaller interactive events. People with small children, people who work non-traditional hours, etc. may not be able to participate in the standard atheism/skepticism in a pub format.

5)Women who grew up within and still live in very conservative, religious, rural communities, especially if they’re also poor, depend on their church communities for social networking, influence, help etc. While internet communities help, physical rural support networks for people who think of leaving a religion are absolutely essential, because people are never likely to cut themselves off from their social safety network if there isn’t an alternative network. (this has worked somewhat on Pharyngula’s TET, both in terms of financial help and personal support. It’s still extremely spotty though)

Well, that’s all I can think of right now, and I’d definitely welcome other ideas or issues that might need to be addressed. It’s not muc right now, because there simply isn’t much to go on right now. That fact alone means that what atheism needs is something like Womanist Musings but for atheism instead of feminism, just so different perspectives can be shared between diverse writers and a wide audience. Obviously, I and my blog are entirely unsuited for that endeavor for the aforementioned reasons and because I suck at organizing people (I wouldn’t be able to convince a starving person to buy a sandwich from me, nevermind convince a bunch of diverse people I don’t know to start blogging together on the issue of intersectional atheism). But I’m curious if anyone has any ideas about which bloggers would make a good contribution to such a collective?

Visual sexism

ad fail, AKA “Fargo, sometimes you suck”:

skeptic fail, AKA “how very 1863 of you”:

Accommodationism: the enemy of progress

As a “Gnu Atheist”, I run across the accommodationist trope in the fight against the toxic shit that comes from religion on a daily basis. But it’s not the only area in which it is present, and in all of them it is the enemy of making actual progress. The call for politeness, for measuredness, for being nice to to the haters and reactionaries who take away and deny us rights, has always been present. The suffragettes were being called unladylike and both anti-women and anti-men (yes, the suffragettes were the first feminazis!) before they ever started throwing stones, and even today people are disputing whether their actions actually helped women gain suffrage (I guess it’s just coincidence that suffrage was achieved after the moderate methods of the suffragists were abandoned in favor of civil disobedience and eventually real militancy). And this has not changed since. Even today, women are still told that “the effectiveness and inclusiveness of women’s advocacy is inversely proportional to its radicalism”.

The Civil Rights movement also had the famous “Uppity Nigger” trope, and MLK himself expressed his frustrations with the “moderates” and accomodationists among the white population in the Letter from Birmingham Jail*:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn’t this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn’t this like condemning Jesus because his unique God consciousness and never ceasing devotion to God’s will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.” Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

The same is being asked of LGBT activists who are called strident for kissing in public like everyone else, mentioning their partner in casual conversation like everyone else, and participating in those shrill, loud, Gay Pride Parades which corrupt children and somehow shove sexuality down people’s throats (as opposed to, you know, simply loudly proclaiming that gays are real people that really exist, not abstracts).

And in all these cases, it’s bullshit. The moderate stance is not accomplishing anything.

Or, if I want to be generous, it’s not accomplishing anything by itself. The moderates need the radicals. For one, without the radicals shifting the Overton Window, they themselves would be seen as the radical end of a spectrum (and in some cases, they are called that anyway). Two, throughout history it took serious threats of social disruption and violence (and sometimes ACTUAL social disruption and violence) to get anyone to do anything. Rights are taken, not politely asked for. Even the two most famous non-violent movements that were successes, were successful because everyone at some point realized that the choice was between dealing with MLK/Ghandi, or dealing with the seriously radical, violent elements (Malcolm X and Subhas Chandra Bose respectively). And let’s face it, even those non-violent movements made the real accommodationists clutch their pearls, since they WERE breaking laws and disrupting the existing social order. they just did it in such a way that none of their opponents were hurt (and nevermind that their opponents definitely didn’t have such scruples. but accommodationists never see that, do they).

Not that, at this point, I’m advocating turning to violence to get our points across, but at some times in history, it seems the threat thereof is the only way to get some social justice. Plus, I wanted to underscore how much less radical the “radical, strident, and militant” feminists/atheists/anti-capitalists/environmentalists/etc. of today are, compared to some of the social justice movements in the past. And yet, the accommodationists whine.

Well, fuck them. Sideways, with a Stinging Tree

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*and also against the “time is on our side, so just sit and wait” BS I wrote about in my last post. But that’s not the point right now.

medium-length thoughts

1)since in my last post I declared the internet connection to be good, it of course crapped out (apparently, caine and I used too much broadband watching videos, so we’re locked out of the internet for 4 days), which is why I’m posting this from Barnes & Noble in Bismarck, and why the post I was going to write will have to wait. Instead, some mostly shallow, shortmedium-length thoughts.

2)I thought the Minot Daily was unreadably conservative and stupid, but the Bismarck Tribune has them beat, by publishing Ross DoucheDouthat (of “women on birth-control turn me off” and “straight marriage should be special because I like being special” fame) in their Op/Ed section. I’m thinking the only way to sink lower than that is to let O’Keefe or Breitbart write for your paper. Or, you know, turn into the Whirled Nut Daily.

3)I have found my copy of Yes Means Yes, and as soon as I’m done reading Matt Taibbi’s Great Derangement, I’m going to re-read it and take notes. I’m still not entirely sure how to sum up its awesomeness, but I figure writing general evaluations of their sub-themes, plus highlighting their most personally thought-provoking sections will be the way to go here.

4)I’m reading SKEPTIC right now, and one of the articles was about Public Intellectuals, and whether they’re needed, what their use is supposed to be, and whether the Public Intellectual is in decline in the US right now. Fascinating article, especially because it touches on something that I’ve been talking about for a while now: the need for a well educated and voluntarily/happily self-educating populace. The article itself doesn’t really talk about this, but it mentions on the one hand that the role of the Public Intellectual is to do what the average person doesn’t have the resources, education, and time to do (think deep, long, and hard about all sorts of social issues), and on the other the fact that in the US, the quality of the Public Intellectual has suffered, because who becomes a widely known PI is determined by their entertainment value and how well their messages confirm the opinions and biases of the general population, rather than the thoroughness and quality of their argument/presentation. It also mentions that the role of the PI has shrunk to academia, where it used to include artists and other non-academic professions. All of which, as far as I’m concerned, are consequences of the way universities work in the US. for one, as they become more expensive, fewer people go; two, for the same reason, people treat them like paying tuition is buying a degree, thus causing grade inflation and similar loss of quality; three, people treat them like investments in their career, and therefore become Fachidioten with a very narrow education in only the areas they find directly relevant to their future careers. On the other side of this are free(ish) public universities in Europe, where people study “useless” shit for fun, where a larger percentage of the population goes to university, and where in general consider knowing stuff a positive trait. From a directly, purely economic POW, the US model is certainly more profitable, but OTOH it does result in a country full of teabaggers. So yeah, heavily subsidized universities are good for the health of a country, because it produces more, and better quality, Public Intellectuals. Whole populations of public intellectuals, for that matter.

5)So… purely hypothetically… what are the prognoses for Hawaii, in re AGW? Is it still going to be a livable place some 15-25 years from now? For that matter, is much of it still going to exist by then…?

Last Copenhagen update

Note: there will be pictures to go with this, but I’m using my dad’s computer and internet right now, which can’t handle uploading images. As soon as I’m back in Germany, I’ll add the photos. Until then, the text will have to suffice, hehe.

When writing the previous whole-day descriptions, I realized I wanted to talk a bit longer about a few of the speakers and the stuff they talked about, but that would have made the other posts way too long, so I saved that for a separate post. I just didn’t think it would take me three weeks to write it. Vacationing makes me lazy, I guess.

The first speaker who really pleasantly surprised me was AC Grayling. Last time I cared about philosophy, I was in High-School, and the philosophy class was basically a meatspace version of Pharyngula with people arguing about everything. Afterwards, all philosophy I encountered was the sort of mental masturbation best exemplified by Christian apologists: building extensive rhetorical and highly hypothetical constructs with no connection to the real world. It seemed like a futile exercise in justifying what you already think is true, as well as creating fanciful world-concepts I had no reason to be interested in, much less accept as possible.
So, AC Grayling’s talk was a sort of re-introduction to a subject I’d completely lost interest in a long time ago. Mostly, I think, I liked that what he talked about was a sort of “applied philosophy”, or “how to live a more atheisty life”. And interestingly enough, it didn’t have anything to do with eating babies :-p
He talked about atheism as more than just the disbelief in deities; rather, he talked about it as part of a secular/skeptical/rational ethical framework. The first time I encountered this idea was in a completely different context: a video by Greta Cristina about secular sexual ethics, which boiled down to “we don’t need to accept authoritarian morality/ethics, because there’s no super-being above us; instead, we’re free to construct sexual ethics based on a rational view that focuses on consent and human needs”. AC Grayling’s talk was a broader, wider applicable version of this: making rationality and skeptical thinking the basis for a person’s (and a community’s) entire moral and ethical framework in all situations. And certainly, such a framework is sorely needed, since even atheists and skeptics usually function within the already-present religion-based frameworks, merely with minor modifications.
At first, he talked about the flaws in religious systems of morality & ethics: he mentioned that they were unreflective, which is certainly true, with their emphasis on authority and tradition on the one hand, and personal experience and “common sense” on the other; fostered acceptance of magic, which sort of works like “crank-magnetism”, since accepting one fantastic thing makes it so much easier to accept more and more of them; and in the case of Christianity, it doesn’t provide a framework for planning for the future, since at heart, Christianity has always been an apocalyptic cult (and I’d say that the Rapture fantasies are the single best example of this;. So is AGW and other environmental denialism along the lines of “humans cannot destroy what god created, that’s hubris!”). He then explained how a rational system should look, and how it would avoid and/or correct the flaws of the religious systems. He talked about Popper’s work, but that mostly just made me realize that I finally need to read more about that myself, since all I got out of that was the basic concept of training oneself to only accept testable ideas. More generally, he talked about the ethics of rationality and inquiry, or the “well-considered life”: living in such a way that decisions are made, and ideas accepted, deliberately, after considering options rationally and skeptically, instead of just going with the flow of society (or family, or even personal previously accepted convictions) by following its traditions and traditional authorities mindlessly. It was primarily about moral traditions, but this is highly applicable to politics, economics, and pretty much every other area of public live where “business as usual” and “staying the course” are pretty much inherently wrong. Lastly, he talked about what sort of society is most conductive to fostering this kind of reflective, rational life: a multicultural society that isn’t afraid of foreign, strange ideas and ways of doing things, and where the legal and cultural structure is such that it fosters and protects individual development, thought and expression, while at the same time making an individual’s responsibilities clear, as well.
It was a great talk. The only problem I had was the way he talked about what is actually skepticism, but called it “atheism”. While atheism is certainly a rational conclusion of a rational, skeptical “well-considered” life that only accepts ideas that are testable, and should be accepted as such by the wider skeptical community, it’s not the entirety of skepticism, and this kind of rational, skeptical atheism isn’t the only atheism out there, either. I don’t know whether he was blurring the line, or making the point that atheism should be pushed as much as possible into the position of rational, skeptical atheism, but it seemed a bad idea to treat atheism and skepticism as sort of synonymous.

The second speaker who made a great impression on me was Lone Frank. She’s a journalist and a has a PhD in neurology, so a lot of her talk was about our brains and how/why they “do” religion. She considers religion a mental parasite rather than an adaptation. She described the brain as a “social machine”, with functions highly adapted to primarily understanding the human environment, and that the “understanding how humans work” spills into the non-human environment, which we then tend to understand and interpret the same way we interpret societies: we anthropomorphize it. One effect of this she highlighted was the tendency to look for intent and purpose in everything (that infamous question “why”), while at the same time having a very hard time understanding the concepts of statistics and chance. This “promiscuous teleology” is most visible in young children: the question “what’s this animal for” might look nonsensical to an adult, but a child will likely answer it with an example of what they’d do with that animal (a lion is for visiting at the zoo, a bunny is for petting, a frog is for catching, etc.). Religion uses and reinforces this anthropomorphizing and teleology by giving people a supernatural force that creates (for a purpose), and cares about and reacts to human behavior. And personally, I even suspect that it might cause a sort of “damage” that makes people even more susceptible to these brain-errors: like just said, young children are extremely teleological, but most adults are much less so. But a young child who is told, throughout their childhood, that their teleological way of looking at the world is indeed correct, may not grow out of it, unlike someone who is taught that most things really aren’t “for” anything, and things don’t always happen for a reason (and fundies constantly demonstrate that they haven’t left the childhood stage of promiscuous teleology, be it with their obsession of Gods Will For Your Life; explanation of all events as either “tests”, rewards, or results of rightfulness or sinfulness; their resentment of environmentalism, etc.).
Anyway, because religion prays on those universal, inherent human attributes, Frank thinks that it will probably never go away (and therefore we need containment strategies, rather than hoping for its disappearance). It does however change to fit in with the society it finds itself in. In the West, this is increasingly a more fuzzy, less literal religion. More and more, especially in Europe but also in more secular regions and denominations in the USA, religion “mutates” into a sort an individualized, cherry-picked personal theology. Conversations about this form of religion center on its positive effects on those who have it: religion is good for your health, religion makes people happy, religion creates community, religion provides a base for personal ethics/morals, etc. and in this form remains at the center even of a society that is supposedly secular and non-religious. Even non-religious people often automatically give respect to the religion of fuzzy goodness, accepting the opinions of religious leaders and religious people in general on all sorts of matters of ethics, even in areas they have no expertise and knowledge (bioethics for example), and rarely argue against it because of the perception of religion as good for people, religious leaders as somehow more moral and more knowledgeable about morals, and personal opinions and beliefs being a matter of taste and not really something one should “attack” and argue about.
In reality, lack of expertise in the fields the religious judge, as well as the inherent flaws in religion-based systems of ethics I wrote about above, mean that there is not only no reason to listen to religious leaders’ opinions about ethics, it can be counterproductive and dangerous to do so. I asked Lone Frank about how she thinks this accepting attitude towards fuzzy religiosity, and their infiltration into everything, can be fought. She answered that we need to highlight their lack of expertise, and refuse to give them a place at the table when discussing ethics, refuse to give their words any influence when they give their opinions unasked, and insist that the media stop asking them. IOW, we need to repeatedly and loudly make it clear that their opinions on ethics just aren’t relevant, and treat them as such when we encounter them. And I think that creating the “rational ethics” system that AC Grayling talked about and popularizing it would help immensely in taking back ethics from the religions which have hijacked it and declared themselves experts, since a rational, skeptical system of ethics simply wouldn’t accept their self-declared authority when they demonstrate no understanding or knowledge of, much less a necessary expertise in, the subjects they’re making judgments about.

The last speaker I wanted to highlight here was Richard Wiseman, for reasons that have nothing to do with the last two speakers. His research into human psychology, especially human perception, was very fascinating to me, especially his research into lucky and unlucky, since the results were very familiar to those from studies about depressed people. It seems both unlucky and depressed people create a story-of-their-life that highlights the negative results, even of positive events (most notably, a lottery-winner who considered himself unlucky, because a bunch of others had the same numbers, so he had to share the prize-money), and are also hyperfocused in such a way that they’re more likely to miss things and opportunities that happen on the periphery of their lives. Similarly, the suggestions for how to stop being “unlucky” also work for training oneself to lessen the effects of depression, by changing these thought- and perception-patterns.
He used this example of the lucky and unlucky people and their emotional and subconscious self-perception as an example of the importance of understanding the human mind and its workings to the ability to find ways of changing these perceptions. This being an atheist conference, he focused his talk on changing the mind of theists. Basically, he was saying that many theists won’t simply reason themselves out of a world-view they’re emotionally invested, and that has for a very long time shaped their way of thinking; to change their minds, we need to address this emotional investment in addition to the cold, hard, facts. Unfortunately I don’t remember if he made any specific suggestions as to how to do that, and my notes don’t show anything either. I didn’t get the impression, luckily, that he was suggesting an accomodationist stance of hushing up “uncomfortable” truths to get theists to accept certain facts about the world. But I’ll have to read and watch more of his stuff to get a better idea of whether his “framing” is any good :-p

So, I guess I’ll have to add a book or two by AC Grayling, Lone Frank’s Mindfield, and Richard Wiseman’s The Luck Factor to my reading list :-)

Copenhagen, days two and three

Saturday was a real marathon of speakers, and required making choices, so there was no way to see all speakers (I hope other people, who have seen the speakers I’ve missed over the weekend will write-up their experiences and impressions as well). It also required notes, since my brain can’t absorb and remember that much information all at once :-p

We didn’t manage to leave Kristjan’s place early enough to get to the convention in time for the first speaker, because we miscalculated how long it would take for 6 people to get ready with only one bathroom. So the morning turned a bit chaotic; but at least there was real bread and real coffee (gotta like a man who knows how to use a French Press!!) for breakfast. Also, I’m glad to note that this time, the conference had food, too: coffee and coffecake for morning snack, beer and buffet for lunch, and more coffee and cake for evening snack :-)

Saw a few minutes of Jens Morten Hansen’s presentation, but not really enough to have an opinion on it. The next speaker was Lone Frank* who in my opinion was one of the best speakers for several reasons. For one, her speech was more locally relevant to the European atheists (especially in contrast to the previous day, which was very heavily America-centric), and from my point of view it was simply a different method of dealing with a different kind of believer than what I’m used to from the US and its fundies and passionately bible-believing Christians; she spoke about the almost instinctive, unearned respect for religion, and for clergy and their opinions, and how this is dangerous and nonsensical, and needs to be repeatedly pointed out as such. And two, she made a pretty good argument why that European, fuzzy, feel-good individualistic religion (AKA “spirituality”) is a kind of “chronic infection” of the brain which we need to learn to treat and minimize and keep from doing damage to our societies, but which is incurable, because of the way our brain is wired for interpreting everything in social terms. And three, she started her presentation with this picture ;-)
The next presentation was by Richard Wiseman*, who is an incredibly funny guy. His presentation was mostly about woo and irrational beliefs in general, but the point of it was to show how people get their irrational beliefs, how their own brains trick them, and how attached people become to these beliefs, and he suggested some methods of teaching rational thinking without ignoring this emotional investment.
Rebecca Watson’s presentation was probably the weakest one. But then, I might be just biased, since it was pink and about tone. She called it “don’t be a dick”, but I think it would more reasonably be “sometimes, it’s not about you”. One of the most annoying habits of evangelicals and new Christians is that they insert their god into every possible conversation. There’s no point in atheists&skeptics becoming like them, but OTOH sometimes, when it actually is about you, I think being rude is perfectly reasonable. For example, while it’s an asshole move to break out into lecturing when a birthday kid is being told to make a wish, it’s entirely reasonable when planning one’s own birthday party to explained to concerned Germans you don’t believe in luck and superstitions, and therefore don’t care that the party is before your birthday instead of after. Similarly, it’s ok to explain the same to someone trying to stop you from walking under a ladder, etc. Also appropriate in my opinion is pointing out that “how very Christian of you” is not a compliment, just like “that’s mighty white of you” isn’t.
I was already very familiar with most of the stuff in Aroup Chatterjee’s presentation of Mother Teresa’s entirely undeserved image as a good woman, so what caught my attention most was the effect she and her PR campaign had on the reputation of Kolkata (Calcutta): while it’s a city plagued by poverty, just like all of India, MT managed to make the world think of it as just one ginormous slum full of starving beggars, and nothing else, disappearing the existence of a middle class and of wealth, culture, and infrastructure. He was very much complaining about how MT’s work made foreigners ignore Kolkata when traveling to India, for example.
The last two presentations were Richard Dawkins and James Randi. Dawkins’ presentation felt oddly generic. He talked mostly about the concept of selection at the level of the gene, and how that’s, in the end, the only level at which it happened. So, basically, “The Selfish Gene” material. Randi’s presentation was hilarious, and made a good point that even a PhD or two don’t protect against being fooled by charlatans, and how a lot of people seem to want to be fooled.

And then we went to have dinner. The speakers were provided a separate table, which I don’t think should have happened; the whole appeal of a dinner like that, after all, is to mingle with the speakers. The Trophy Wife joined us for a large part of it, and PZ towards the end, but all mingling really only happened right at the beginning, before people figured out that it was ok to sit down**. Food itself was ok, but not precisely spectacular (it’s actually depressing that my flight-food was better; ok, it was business-class for once, but still), primarily because it was a buffet. I did pig out on the fancy cheese plate and fruit that were served as dessert. yumyum. Afterwards, we went to another bar to continue our conversations, but were kicked out indecently early, at 2am. I did end up sleeping through all but one Sunday sessions, but that was because I didn’t get to sleep till way past 5am (stoopid internet…).

So, all I’ve seen on Sunday was Victor Stenger. He went relatively superficially through some of the “fine tuning” arguments. Physics is entirely beyond me, so all I’ve gotten out of that was that all these “precisely tuned” parameters are actually often within a range, and/or pre-determined by some other physical parameters/attributes. I really regret missing Michael Nugent’s speech, since apparently a lot of other people liked it, and it could have spared me the mild embarrassment of not realizing that I’d spent half the night talking to him, hehe. Anyway, the sightseeing afterwards unfortunately was cut short by extremely rainy weather; combined with the 24hr delay of my flight, this basically meant I haven’t actually seen much of Copenhagen, which is somewhat disappointing. Dinner was at a Thai restaurant that offered “octopus with holy basil”, I was tempted, but opted instead for the spicy red curry with duck instead. And then I finally got to see the by now famous Ørsted Ølbar, which is cosy and has decent beer, but shitty lighting that nearly put me to sleep. And then we got kicked out, and the last bar we went to mostly excited Rorschach and Ye Olde Blacksmith, cuz they could smoke inside :-p Anyway, that’s where we got into a conversation with Michael Nugent about how to create a more non-Englishspeaker-centric conference, i.e. involving more south and east European participants and speakers. A lot of really good ideas were bandied about, and I hope they will be able to implement a lot of them, over time.

Ok, this is waaaay too freaking long already. Hope no-one fell asleep while reading it!

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*I’m going to write a more thorough recap/review of my favorite presentations, because including them in this post made it WAAAAAAAAY too long and unfocused.

** interesting phenomenon, btw… all the people trickling in were just sort of standing around in the middle, while the seating-section was completely empty. Eventually, a couple pharyngulites realized the absurdity of the increasingly crowded situation, so we found ourselves a nice, big table. there was still some off-table mingling, but we didn’t have to stand in the way of everybody else. most other people didn’t sit down until the announcement was made, though…

Copenhagen pictures

Here are a few pictures from the God & Politics Conference:

Group photo of the attending pharynguloids; only the Trophy Wife is missing.

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we took over the longest table during the Dinner. PZ ate mostly at the “speaker’s table” (pfffffttt…..), but the Trophy Wife joined us for a large part of the evening.

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Kristjan explaining stuff to PZ

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Moose Elk for sale! ;-)